4 Top Ways to Get Employees Engaged in their Healthcare Choices

Employees are your company’s most valuable asset. However, according to Gallup, only 32 percent of employees in the US are engaged with their work, meaning they’re actively enthusiastic about and involved in their workplace. 

That means more than two-thirds of the workforce is disengaged with their work or workplace, and employee engagement and wellness are strongly linked. So what do unengaged workers cost your company? A lot, it turns out.

The Cost of Low Employee Engagement

Unengaged employees have a massive impact on a company’s bottom line, productivity, and innovation. They’re also more vulnerable to stress, which is a significant contributor to health. 

Workers with high stress levels can experience poor physical health, such as weight gain, fatigue, and general aches. This stress can also impact mental health, causing anger, depression, and anxiety. In a Deloitte survey, 91 percent of employee respondents stated that unmanageable stress negatively impacts their work quality.  

These findings demonstrate the connection between employee engagement and wellness and how stress impacts both. Therefore, implementing strategies to combat workplace stress while improving employee engagement is key: 

• Communicate openly: Open a dialogue with your employees to discover what they need. If you listen, they’ll tell you what they require to become more engaged.
• Provide meaningful benefits: Get workers engaged in their healthcare and provide them with meaningful employee benefits. Wellness programs are key to helping employees make better choices and change their lifestyles, resulting in higher job satisfaction and productivity.

Best Practices to Improve Employee Engagement

It’s hard for people to build new habits, especially surrounding their own health. In particular, your employees may have difficulty engaging in their healthcare and understanding their benefits.

Tools like Healthcare Bluebook engage employees by showing them how to shop for healthcare services to save money and improve the quality of their care.  It starts with frequent communication, a strong launch strategy, and incentives to encourage workers to learn more about their benefits.

Engagement rewards change employees’ shopping behavior by redirecting them away from high-cost, low-quality providers and guiding them toward high-value healthcare and more affordable, clinically comparable prescription medications.

When your enrolled members use Healthcare Bluebook to shop for and receive care from high-value providers, the plan saves money, your company sees higher ROI, and employees become more engaged. 

How do we do it? Through these proven healthcare shopping best practices and incentives programs like Go Green to Get Green:

• Educate: We start with a strong launch strategy, including welcome kits, guided tours, videos, and interactive games.
• Remind: We make it fun! Members are approximately 11 times more likely to look around for care after playing one of Bluebook’s interactive games that teach them how to use the tool.
• Reinforce and nurture: We communicate consistently and frequently. For best results, we recommend communicating with employees bi-monthly or quarterly.
• Reward: We use rewards to boost engagement. Our Go Green to Get Green program uses targeted incentives to reward cost-effective, quality-driven healthcare choices.

4 Benefits of Improving Employee Engagement in Healthcare 

Let’s explore the benefits you’ll experience after implementing engagement best practices:

1. Improved Health

Encouraging employees to engage with their healthcare benefits can help them develop healthier habits and avoid risk factors for chronic conditions. They may eat well-rounded meals and be motivated to exercise, thus reducing their risk of long-term conditions and helping them feel happier and more energized during the workday.

2. Boosted Productivity

Engaged, healthy employees keep their stress levels low and avoid burnout. When employees engage in wellness programs, they tend to be more productive because they’re well-rested, energized, and motivated to complete their work. 

3. Increased Morale

Companies that foster an atmosphere of wellness help workers feel more connected to the company. This strengthens the relationships workers have with each other and their managers, increasing the likelihood they stay at their current place of employment for a long time. Employees will also feel more supported in their health goals, which can make them feel more valued.

4. Decreased Healthcare Costs

Many employees don’t realize that their healthcare choices affect their benefits costs. By communicating with employees, getting them engaged with their healthcare, and increasing their healthcare shopping literacy, companies can reduce healthcare costs. Not only will workers take advantage of their employee benefits and experience better health as a result, but they will also make more informed healthcare decisions, saving themselves and your organization money.

Invest in Engagement Solutions

Wellness programs are only effective when employees actively participate in them. To keep workers engaged in their healthcare, provide healthcare navigation tools like Healthcare Bluebook and reward them through targeted financial incentives like Bluebook’s Go Green to Get Green engagement rewards program.